I wanted to post all of our plans, as of right now, for what we're going to try to do in the future for Death Road updates. This will include our thoughts for possible ːmeltychanː mod support and online multiplayer ːmeltychanː at the bottom of the post, as I thought it would be good to talk these in one spot. That way people can be linked to this post, in the future.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Recent News
- COCHLEA Update
- DUODENUM Update
- Future Updates
- New Platforms
- Mod Support
- Online Multiplayer
Recent News
We had some problems with the Visual Studio redistributables, which we're still dealing with. Short summary is that some Microsoft drivers are supposed to automatically install when Steam runs, but for a small amount of people, they don't. This makes Death Road open for a moment, then close.
We're looking into just making it so the game no longer requires the common redist, which it didn't before achievements. A lot of people have had luck with some solutions found on the discussion forums, but not all.
The redist problem has eaten up a bunch of time. For Brainstem, we had planned to do the new Perk/Trait unlocking system. Since that would take a lot of time for testing we lost, we decided to move some content that was going to be in a future update. This included the weapon buyer, who was originally in a much later update.
This shuffles some things around for our next updates, though we don't end up losing anything. Unrelated to the above problem, we also decided to get out the updates a little faster than we were going to.
COCHLEA UPDATE
Formerly the Coccyx Update, that was going to happen in July. Now this update will likely happen some time in late May. We changed the name of the update because it will include
ːhorsemannː NEW MUSIC ːhorsemannː
Besides the new music, the main focus of this update will be getting in the multiple-game progression system we wanted to do for BRAINSTEM. You'll earn points in game that you can use to upgrade perks, or unlock new perks and traits. This is to replace the current progression system, which is kind of unsatisfying and much too invisible for new players.
Also, we are going to attempt getting the multiplayer revamp in for either this update, or the one after. Not sure yet, it depends on problems we run into. The planned main new feature will be split-screen, so both players can split up whenever they would like. We're also going to take the time to look at other co-op requests we've seen.
I am also going to try to get some extra content squeezed in to this update. Probably not a ton of it, since we'll be busy getting these new major features in and tested.
DUODENUM UPDATE
This update will happen around the time of the 1 year anniversary of the game's launch. Maybe a little after. The focus will be entirely on new content.
- New locations!
- New road events!
- New weapons!
- New characters!
- New system: Special Trading Camps!
We've been so busy adding new features and new systems, that we never really got a chance to sit down and just churn out pure content. We really want to add new things to experience, making Death Road more varied. That's what we're hoping to do with the DUODENUM update, though we may also use this update to finish multiplayer revamps if that runs long.
The only new system planned here will be Special Trading Camps, which is mostly based off our current trading camp systems. You will sometimes be able to find a unique trading camp, with traders in it that only appear in that camp. An idea we had was finding a Renaissance Faire, full of medieval weapons and LARPers*.
*Live Action Role Players, the strongest warriors of the zombocalypse.
FUTURE UPDATES
After Duodenum, that will be a full year of major updates. After that, we're still going to be updating the game. Updates will become smaller, and mostly focus on adding new content to keep adding surprises to the game.
We will likely also devote some updates to new features. The difference is that a feature update wlil likely only contain that new feature, instead of multiple features and a bunch of content on top of that.
NEW PLATFORMS
Death Road is out for iOS already, you can get it on the App Store. Here's the post on that, in case you missed it. It also has news on our last BRAINSTEM update, which added Trading Cards, Badges, and Death Road emoticons!
http://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/469904564203284246
Android's on the way. A porting company is working on it right now. My guess is that it will take a couple of months, but it's mostly in their hands.
Looking into Sony and other consoles! Haven't been able to take a good look yet. Mostly we use porting companies to handle all other platforms past PC and iOS, so we're looking around. We can't handle more ourselves, because we're generally busy with updates and we're also two people.
ːskeleː IMPORTANT NOTE ːskeleː
Everything below this line is the "we're going to try" zone.
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MOD SUPPORT
The game supports modding right now, but actually downloading and installing the mods is difficult. The game is set up more for total conversions, since you can only really install one mod at a time. "Installing a mod" is mostly just overwriting the game files at present.
The more modern method of doing this is letting you install a bunch of mods at a time, and having them all stack together. We did some attempts and the game really just doesn't support stacking mods. It's something you have to do from the ground up, and we didn't when we were first making the game.
Even with that limitation, I'd like to figure something out for better mod support. I'll give this another shot, and I may try to slip this in to DUODENUM. The catch is that I could mostly support one thing, so I'd have to pick something important and widely used. I'm thinking I should attempt better support for putting in new special characters into the game, since that's likely the most impressive thing to create.
If the above fails, maybe we can just have Steam Workshop support the "total conversion" style mods. I'm aware that there's a few of these already. Letting people install these mods in Steam Workshop would give them a lot more exposure. I think they deserve being seen, because they're cool.
ONLINE MULTIPLAYER
I've mentioned this in comments and discussions, but the most likely way for us to figure out online is to make a new game based on online co-op in the same engine as Death Road. Then we could try to backwards-port it to this game. Being able to figure online multiplayer out from a fresh game would help us a lot, because we don't have much experience with online multiplayer.
It's possible mostly because the game already supports local multiplayer. The big challenge is figuring out the netcode.
We're aware of how many people want online, and we'd love it ourselves. Just can't promise anything, since it's a big task for us. Best case, it will take a long while, and be the result of us first figuring it out in a follow-up game. Worst case, we fail horribly in some step along the way, and waste a lot of time.
I think it's worth a shot, though.
ːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceː
That's it for now! Post in the comments below if you have any questions. I'll edit this post if there's any big things I missed. ːmountieː
If you like what we're doing, leave a review for the game! It helps us out a bunch.